The Living End (35 page)

“Jen?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“
Now
shoot her.”

Jennifer took aim and snapped off five shots. One at the glass window behind Lauren, and four into the burning woman’s chest, pushing her toward it.

The last of the purple light flickered and died. I saw Lauren, just for one split second, in its wake. Not a transformed monster, not consumed by the Garden’s plants, not anything at all. Just a would-be goddess with a shattered throne.

The cracked window gave under the mannequins’ weight, and she fell with them, smoldering and broken, thirty-six floors to the concrete below.

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. We just ran for the fire escape.

We went up, not down, emerging onto the windy rooftop. A cold night breeze whipped through my hair. The helicopter was waiting for us, just as planned, with the twins on pilot duty. I clambered into the back row of seats, and Meadow got in next to me, with Jennifer taking a seat in front. She slammed the door shut behind us.

“Agnelli Airlines, cleared for takeoff!” Juliette chirped as the helicopter lifted from the roof. “Sorry, there will be no movie on this flight.”

As we veered away, I looked out to the blazing building below and the swarm of red and blue lights strobing in the distance. It was finally over. Lauren Carmichael was dead.

The helicopter flew into the dark, away from the lights of Vegas. Out into the desert.

“I’ve been thinking,” Meadow said, breaking the silence. “Witness protection is some bullshit. What am I gonna do, become a florist in Albuquerque? And give up all my money? Forget that. I’m going to Costa Rica. You paid me to work for you until Lauren bit the bullet. She’s done, so I’m done.”

I nodded up at the twins. “Here’s good, I think.”

“What’s good?” Meadow said. Her scar twitched.

I reached under my seat. Under the cushion, my fingers closed on the gun Nicky had planted there for me. I pulled it out and jabbed the barrel into Meadow’s ribs.

“She’s done,” I said. “So you’re done.”

We landed on a lonely outcropping of rock in the middle of nowhere. I pushed Meadow out of the helicopter. Jennifer got out behind me, reloading her revolver.

“Walk,” I said.

We stood in the helicopter’s headlights under a canopy of pitiless stars. Meadow took a few halting steps back, looking around as if there was anywhere to run.

“You can’t do this,” she said. “We had a deal!”

I shook my head.

“Come on, Meadow. We were never going to let you walk away.”

“You’ve got too much of our family’s blood on your hands,” Jennifer said. “We don’t let that go. Ever.”

“That was
Lauren
! That—that was all her.
She
gave the orders!”

“And you did the killing,” I said.

She waved a hand in front of her face, like she thought it could stop a bullet. “Just—just hold on a second. What about the confession? I disappear, my lawyer sends it straight to the feds! You’ll go to prison, Faust!”

“Should have checked into that. Those two murders I confessed to? I
didn’t
commit them. In fact, I have rock-solid alibis for both. That confession is worthless. The only thing it’ll do is waste Agent Black’s precious time.”

“I have money, okay? I have a
lot
of money. I skimmed more off Lauren than she ever realized. You can
have
it. Just let me walk away. You’ll never see me again, I swear it!”

I looked at Jennifer. She looked at me.

“That last part,” I said. “That was true.”

When we flew in for the landing, I’d seen lights in the distance. A campfire to cut the cold of the desert night. They must have been hikers, camping far from civilization. I wondered what it sounded like when Jennifer and I raised our guns and emptied them into Meadow Brand’s body, sending her staggering back in a stream of billowing bloody gunshots until she crumpled, glassy-eyed and dead, on the sand-swept rock. Did it sound like distant fireworks? I wondered. Or just the finality of a book slamming shut at the end of the final page?

We left her corpse for the coyotes and the vultures. In a week’s time, nothing but sun-bleached bones would remain.

I
jogged through the glossy halls of the Metropolitan with slot machines jangling at my back. My watch said 11:59 as I swept down an unmarked hallway lined with old vinyl record sleeves, around the corner, and into the little pizza joint that didn’t show up on any of the casino’s maps. The place smelled like hot pepperoni and warm beer, and the tiny counter was thronged with drunks hungry for a late-night snack.

Caitlin looked up from a high-top table in the corner, and her smile lit up the room. Or maybe it was just me, floating on air all the way into her arms.

“You’re right on time,” she whispered and kissed me. I could have held that moment forever. Two greasy paper plates sat out, laden with pizza, one for her and one for me. She hadn’t doubted me. While I sat down at the table, she took out her phone.

“Cancel Case Exodus,” she said crisply. “Repeat,
cancel
it. Order is restored, business as usual. Get back to work.”

She hung up and turned her attention toward me.

“Job’s done,” I said.

“It’s funny.” She reached out for a glass jar of hot pepper flakes, sprinkling them on her slice of pizza. “All the time I’ve known you, we’ve been veering from one crisis to another. We might have to shift gears now.”

“We might have more time to spend together,” I said, “like a normal couple. We might even need…hobbies.”

“Oh, I’m sure we can keep each other busy.”

“Agreed.” I took a bite of my pizza. The melted cheese singed the roof of my mouth, but the flavor was worth the pain. “And now I can actually look for a new place to live without being shot at.”

Caitlin reached out to her paper cup of soda. She didn’t drink it. She just played with the straw, restless.

“Daniel.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking. I’m…I’m not inviting you to move in with me. It’s too soon. There are too many questions, too many things we both have to come to terms with.”

“I would never ask—”

“But I think,” she said, cutting me off, “given how you do seem to be spending the night a little more often…you should have a drawer.”

I blinked. “A drawer?”

“A drawer. You know, for toiletries, and an emergency change of clothes, and that sort of thing. Just to make it easier. Easier for you to stay with me.”

I reached across the table and took her hand.

“I’d like that,” I said. “I’d like that a lot.”

“You’ll have to pick out which drawer you want, of course,” she said. “Sooner is better.”

“How soon?” I said.

“Why don’t you come home with me tonight?”

“You,” I said, “just want to drive my car again.”

She winked.

• • •

You couldn’t turn on a radio or a television the next morning without hearing the news. The cops had staged a daring moonlight raid on the Enclave, the story went, following evidence that Carmichael-Sterling’s management was behind the kidnapping ring at the New Life shelter. A hundred drugged and confused homeless people, some from as far away as San Francisco and Tucson, had been freed from captivity without incident.

The talking heads were having a field day, calling it a “real life horror movie” and speculating about how Carmichael-Sterling’s wealthy backers were involved in everything from gladiator fights to snuff movies. The headline on one tabloid site screamed “Unanswered Questions in Carmichael Case: Were the Rich Literally Eating the Poor?”

Harmony Black massaged the news, smooth as silk. She gave them sexy questions to speculate on all day long while hiding the real story. There weren’t any photographs of what the first responders found up on that penthouse floor, and the news maintained that Lauren Carmichael—along with her entire board of directors and a laundry list of names Meadow’s confession implicated—were wanted for questioning. I didn’t know if that meant Harmony had covered up Lauren’s death, snaking off with the body for her bosses back in Washington, or if there was just so little left after the fire and the fall that her remains hadn’t been identified yet.

The Xerxes mercs, the ones who couldn’t slip the dragnet, gave up without firing a shot. Angus Caine wasn’t one of them. The feds flashed his mug around too, as one of the suspects wanted for questioning, and the revelation of a British private military company working for criminals on American soil kicked up a little dust storm of its own.

No mention of Nedry and Clark, either captured or wanted. They’d gotten lost in the wind.

The doors of St. Jude’s leaned wide open to let in the morning sun. I pulled up to the curb and got out, cupping my hand over my eyes to cut the glare. Pixie spotted me from across the room as I stepped inside. She didn’t quite make a beeline for me. I saw the drag in her step.

“Hey,” I said. “Looks like business is picking up.”

She looked over at the crowd of regulars lining up at the chow tables, and nodded.

“Yeah.” She crossed her arms tight over her chest. “A lot of people came back last night. A whole lot of families are back together again. They’re still in a rough spot, but…they’re together.”

“Told you.”

She looked at me and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

“So,” I said. “We cool now?”

“There’s stuff—” she started to say. She dropped her arms to her sides. “There’s some stuff I don’t want to get involved in, okay? Stuff I wish I didn’t know, but there’s no changing that. But, yeah. We’re cool. And if you need me, for a job or whatever…you can call me.”

“Good,” I said. I turned and walked away.

“Faust,” she said.

I looked back at her.

“You did a really good thing back there,” she said. “You helped a lot of people.”

I shrugged.

“Maybe you should think about that,” Pixie told me. “I mean…you can do anything you want. It’s your choice. Maybe you could turn things around. You know…keep helping people. Maybe it’d feel good.”

“Yeah, Pix. Sure. Maybe.”

I drove to a cafe a few blocks over, bought a cup of coffee and the morning paper, and sat down at a sidewalk table under the shade of a big brown umbrella. I thought about what Pixie had said, long and hard.

Lauren Carmichael, her cult, and her legacy were gone. The ax hanging over my head was gone with it. Sure, I still had to deal with Harmony Black and her legal crusade, but I’d get through that storm when it came. For the first time in a long while I felt myself standing at a crossroads. Wherever I went from here, whatever I did, was totally up to me. What was it Caitlin had said about Emma? “We all have to be true to our nature.” That sounded about right to me.

I flipped through the paper to the local events section. A jazz festival was coming to town. A new art gallery was about to open. A traveling museum collection was on display. I read every detail, asking myself questions, brainstorming ideas.

By the time I borrowed a ballpoint pen and started jotting down actual notes, circling one article and scribbling about guards and burglar alarms in the margins, old habits had their claws buried deep into my skin. I knew exactly what I was looking for.

My next big score.

We all have to be true to our nature.

T
he rusty sedan clattered down the interstate, heading east.

“Such bullshit,” Nedry said, slouching in the passenger seat with his arms crossed over his chest. “Such unmitigated and utter
bullshit
.”

“You know it, buddy,” Clark said, driving.

“Years of work, down the drain. Our research money? Gone. Grants? Oh-ho-ho, just imagine us trying to get grants now that we’ve spent years in the shadow economy. Neither one of us has published a research paper in ages! What are we gonna do? Get teaching jobs? High school chemistry?
Community
fucking
college
? Oh Jesus, we’re gonna end up teaching community college, aren’t we?”

“Hey, buddy,” Clark said. “Chillax.”

He turned on the radio. A Grateful Dead tune washed in over the cheap speakers.

“Did you just…you did
not
just tell me to ‘chillax.’ Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

Clark leaned his head back and smiled serenely. “All I’m saying is, opportunities are everywhere! We’ve got our partnership, we’ve got brains, and you know what else we’ve got?”

Nedry glared at him, sullen. “What?”

“Science.”

Nedry stared out the window, his mirrored lenses reflecting the stark desert wastes, and sighed.

“Yeah,” he said, “you’ve got a point. I guess if we stick together, we can figure something out.”

“We can, and we will. Trust me.”

Clark looked up to the rearview mirror. He smiled at the smoke-faced man sitting in the backseat.

The man raised one bony finger, putting it to the void where his lips would have been if he had a face.

Shh
.

“That’s right, buddy,” Clark said, turning up the radio. “Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

<<<<>>>>

O
ne story ends, and one begins. Daniel Faust will return soon, with new adventures, new challenges, and, as shadows loom over the Vegas skyline, a new enemy unlike anything he’s ever faced before. If you want to be the first to know what happens next, head over to
craigschaeferbooks.com
and hop onto my
mailing list
for announcements about new releases. You can also catch me on
Facebook
,
Twitter
, or just drop me an email at
[email protected]
. I’d love to hear from you.

Grateful thanks to Kira Rubenthaler and James T. Egan at Bookfly Designs, my amazing editor and cover designer. They’re an indispensible part of my team.

Names of certain real-life businesses have been changed for legal purposes. The author has also been politely asked to state that “Justine and Juliette aren’t just great pilots, they’re great at absolutely everything they do. They are smart and wonderful and awesome. Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous and should feel bad about themselves.”